Missile Telemetry

... sorry for the snark, cthia.

It is humorous to me that we talk about gravitic control links and communications like it is some analog to RF communications that we are familiar with. That would imply the existence of RLC circuits for gravitic energy as opposed to electromagnetic radiation.

And in our world it is pretty simple to have an RF antenna that transmits and receives on multiple frequencies simultaneously. There also isn't a whole lot in physics that makes it impossible to do so for much, much higher frequencies. Gravitic radiation appears to be different.

Yes, you might want different antennas for different gain and bandwidth tradeoffs.

drinksmuchcoffee wrote:

cthia wrote:And in the midst of that chaos, you don't want to be cutting communications channels to rotate, even temporarily - which effectively that's what it amounts to - regardless of the gigasecond response time of the rotating connections/computers.

I really hope 21st century AD computers are considerably faster than a gigasecond response time.

I really hope so too. I couldn't offer up a guesstimate, but at least I made it faster than our current times.

My carambas, such is the seriousness of a cut & paste & edit error.

Funny.

cthia wrote:

munroburton wrote:It's important to remember that Apollo is the combination of two, maybe three concepts - FTL transceiver and relay missiles, with the third being a beefed up tac computer.

Each of those three concepts in isolation trades off more than it gains.

1) FTL transceiver on all missiles = ammo capacity cut by over half(instead of ~20%).
2) You don't need a LS relay missile; as Haven showed, it's possible to rotate fire control links for a modest accuracy penalty. They also slaved entire pods of missiles to each of a fort's fire control channel at Barnett. There is no intrinsic benefit to a LS relay missile - indeed, it would impose delays upon the communication loop - and until podlayers showed up, even pod-towing combatants could not saturate their own fire control anyway.
3) As with #1, adding or reallocating mass on all missiles to larger and better computers = ammo capacity cuts. It's also a comparative waste of computing power, as each missile then only has one payload to deliver(as it is currently, Apollo's beefy computer has six attack and two EW missiles to work with).

Regarding the part of your post that is highlighted.

That's not acceptable for Apollo. Apollo's advantage, although because of FTL, is its accuracy. You don't want to ever give up any of your main advantage. We have already established that the control missiles do not talk to each other so they cannot relay any last updated information. And the decreased accuracy would not remain constant across the board, being vulnerable to distance, complexity of vectors, EW and attack profiles.

And in the midst of that chaos, you don't want to be cutting communications channels to rotate, even temporarily - which effectively that's what it amounts to - regardless of the gigasecond response time of the rotating connections/computers.

Somtaaw wrote:On the contrary, Apollo actually further enables temporarily rotating your control links to other Apollo missiles, because they specifically have enhanced computers that have that autonomous mode. And even by rotating those links among several ACM's, due to the FTL nature, you aren't actually losing very much accuracy at all because you're still using FTL comms to transmit back and forth between launch ship and ACM.

You could basically do a BoMa Second Fleet and just rotate through hundreds of Apollo's, each controlling their 8 brothers & sisters, and the tiny accuracy degradation is still more than off-set by the fact you've got eight times as many missiles in space. And each cluster has that Apollo computer in autonomous mode in between rotations, which is probably at least as good as a pre-war destroyer working off the last set of FTL-transmitted instructions.


The only time you're actually not getting a performance increase, is because you're at SDM ranges, so you can't gain any of the Apollo FTL advantages, nor can you launch enough missiles at SDM ranges to really ramp up the missiles in flight before they're detonating.

Please note my emboldening.

Is that true? My apology if I'm that far off. I thought that Apollo communicated with its brood of missiles simultaneously? The control missile maintains communication. And that the control missiles do not enjoy links to each other.

cthia wrote:And in the midst of that chaos, you don't want to be cutting communications channels to rotate, even temporarily - which effectively that's what it amounts to - regardless of the gigasecond response time of the rotating connections/computers.

I think you mean Pico-second or nano-second. A billion seconds response time is pretty slow.

cthia wrote:Is that true? My apology if I'm that far off. I thought that Apollo communicated with its brood of missiles simultaneously? The control missile maintains communication. And that the control missiles do not enjoy links to each other.

Apollo and KHII actually depend on rotating links. Not the single control link hopping between several missiles, but several control links (KHIIs) swapping control of the same missiles.

Weird Harold wrote:...
I think you mean Pico-second or nano-second. A billion seconds response time is pretty slow.

Given that light and electricity travel a fraction of a millimeter in a picosecond, it is going to be challenging to get that response time out of an SDs fire control computers.

FTL waveguides.

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:Is that true? My apology if I'm that far off. I thought that Apollo communicated with its brood of missiles simultaneously? The control missile maintains communication. And that the control missiles do not enjoy links to each other.

Apollo and KHII actually depend on rotating links. Not the single control link hopping between several missiles, but several control links (KHIIs) swapping control of the same missiles.

Harold's right that KHII's rotate which one actually transmits to any fired Apollo missiles. But even with that organized rotating, the Havenite rotating control links is more "fire way more than we can normally control and then flip back and forth" which does induce lower accuracy.


But Apollo is so ridiculously, and insanely accurate than even a tiny accuracy sacrifice turns into launching ridiculously large salvo's. The Apollo missiles stay in constant contact with their 8 pod sisters, and only occasionally communicate with the ships behind them. Just by firing Apollo pods, you've already multipled your nominal "max" missile count by a factor of 8. I think it said in AAC, that by rotating control links, Haven could increase it's missile salvo's by 60% or so.

If I recall Medusas, and maybe Invictus SDP's have a max of around 200 or 300 missiles? So again, applying the Apollo + Havenite rotating control links, a single podnought willing to accept ever so slightly lower accuracy (from the most ridiculously accurate missiles in existance), is launching over 2500 missiles alone.

The original usage of Apollo, at Lovat, showed us that 12 SDPs used 4 patterns each for a total of 288 pods and killed 2 of Giscards SDps with over 1200 missiles, and took out all 16 SDPs (and 4 CLACs) with less than 11 salvo's of ~1900 attack missiles. The post brief of Lovat states that although they vastly overstated the missiles necessary by 50%, they only planned to reduce it by 30 or 40%.

kzt wrote:FTL waveguides.

Even Honorverse technology isn't up to that level of miniaturization. The technology of the Fourth Imperium, the Fourth Empire and the Fifth Imperium may have been up to the task, though.

Apollo and KHII actually depend on rotating links. Not the single control link hopping between several missiles, but several control links (KHIIs) swapping control of the same missiles.[/quote]


Harold's right that KHII's rotate which one actually transmits to any fired Apollo missiles. But even with that organized rotating, the Havenite rotating control links is more "fire way more than we can normally control and then flip back and forth" which does induce lower accuracy.


But Apollo is so ridiculously, and insanely accurate than even a tiny accuracy sacrifice turns into launching ridiculously large salvo's. The Apollo missiles stay in constant contact with their 8 pod sisters, and only occasionally communicate with the ships behind them. Just by firing Apollo pods, you've already multipled your nominal "max" missile count by a factor of 8. I think it said in AAC, that by rotating control links, Haven could increase it's missile salvo's by 60% or so.

If I recall Medusas, and maybe Invictus SDP's have a max of around 200 or 300 missiles? So again, applying the Apollo + Havenite rotating control links, a single podnought willing to accept ever so slightly lower accuracy (from the most ridiculously accurate missiles in existance), is launching over 2500 missiles alone.

The original usage of Apollo, at Lovat, showed us that 12 SDPs used 4 patterns each for a total of 288 pods and killed 2 of Giscards SDps with over 1200 missiles, and took out all 16 SDPs (and 4 CLACs) with less than 11 salvo's of ~1900 attack missiles. The post brief of Lovat states that although they vastly overstated the missiles necessary by 50%, they only planned to reduce it by 30 or 40%.[/quote]

Standard RNN podlayers have over 400 light speed links. There is a quote during BOMA that the average number of control links amongdt home fleet' podnaughts was (including the first flight Adlers) was over 400 per SD(p).

cthia wrote:And in the midst of that chaos, you don't want to be cutting communications channels to rotate, even temporarily - which effectively that's what it amounts to - regardless of the gigasecond response time of the rotating connections/computers.

Weird Harold wrote:I think you mean Pico-second or nano-second. A billion seconds response time is pretty slow.

No. I meant gigasecond. It was just a poor editing error on too ambitious of a bloated post. My first drafts can be a doozie. Most of it never makes it to the cutting room floor.

My first draft was something like "No matter what insane response times Honorverse computers can attain, if cutting control links are employed, it may as well be rated in gigaseconds - as in the situation that a missile faced prior to reestablishing links couldn't change any more drastically in a gigasecond. Or something like that. I even had something about the execution time of the software routine, yatta yatta yatta, as I said, bloated post. Sometimes I need to send my posts to an editor before sending.

I've got gigsecs on the brain. There's a Rubik's cube contest presently going on in the family. Anything more than 45 seconds is too slow. Over a minute is a gigsec of laughs. (A kids play on words. Meaning how much you can giggle/sec in 31 years, at your opponent.)

It takes me, at least, 45 seconds. I'm the slowest in the pack. But their kindness allowed my record to be acceptable - they're so kind. And I can't beat my own time (set in junior high) often. Sometimes it takes me over a minute depending on how that damn cube is spinning. Sometimes it gets stuck. Kids are constantly pulling off sub 20's with a much faster (and complicated) algorithm in their heads. There's talk of a kid somewhere pulling in five secs???

The algorithm that I use requires you to be able to get at least one face beforehand. But after that, you can literally close your eyes or amaze the masses by solving the cube behind your back. At that point you are only counting the amount of turns on a particular axis - an algorithm. There are other, harder to memorize, algorithms that are much faster and don't require an initial face first.

Once you learn to solve a cube in this manner, it becomes a bit boring. But enough of how my wife and I are wasting our vacation.

cthia wrote:Is that true? My apology if I'm that far off. I thought that Apollo communicated with its brood of missiles simultaneously? The control missile maintains communication. And that the control missiles do not enjoy links to each other.

Weird Harold wrote:Apollo and KHII actually depend on rotating links. Not the single control link hopping between several missiles, but several control links (KHIIs) swapping control of the same missiles.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for clearing up my confusion.

If I may be granted a wish used in the form of a question, why is this method employed by keyhole? Is it to address an inherent limitation or to sharpen resolution, i.e., the rotation is to ensure the KH platforms closest to the action has control, or is it a matter of rotating links to avoid localization, or a combo of both? Of course it makes sense, in case a particular platform is destroyed.